You’ve seen it before — countless times probably — the banal phrases: “Visit us on Facebook” or “Friend us on Twitter.”

These days, marketing should run hand-in-hand with a strong social media presence. But having a profile on Facebook or sending tweets on Twitter are table stakes, not (as we see over and over again) the closing exclamation point for a television commercial or a radio spot.

Consider this: The most vital brands – Apple, Amazon and Nike – never advertise their existence on Facebook. It’s a given that Amazon has a group page on Facebook and that Nike is sending out frequent tweets on Twitter. As consumers in an evolving marketplace, we should assume this and companies should act accordingly.

Brian Stelter, a media reporter for The New York Times, who was highlighted in Page One, a documentary on the changing landscape of the newspaper industry, provided interesting insight on this topic.

“Twitter makes us faster and smarter,” Stelter said in a recent interview. “It doesn’t change my day, but it probably changes how aware I am of the news. It makes me respond to the news faster.”

While this blog isn’t about focusing on the positive facets of Twitter and Facebook, it is about reminding companies that using these social media tools isn’t “big news.” Stelter reaffirms the necessity of these social media avenues for businesses.

Having a social media presence is an intangible for businesses, but sharing that you have it is not a means to steal market share.

Just as banks offer free checking, or fast food restaurants offer quick service, every vital company should have a Facebook and Twitter identity.

A word to the wise: Please stop wasting your time telling us you have these options.

There are many signs that a company doesn’t know what it is doing with its brand, but one is a lack of willingness to let things go that are not working. While this might seem like simply an operational decision, predicated by a steadily declining financial sheet, it is actually one connected to brand. Often, what often performs poorly financially is also not correctly aligned with a brand strategy. They work hand in hand, which means by living to your brand promise, you can make the right decision on what products to keep and which ones to lose.

If you consider brands that are struggling lately (Sony, Best Buy), it is part and parcel to the fact that they lose sight of the brand. For instance, consider Sony, which has a hand in about every possible tech pot it can. From TVs to MP3 players, to Ereaders to tablets, to alarm clocks to cameras to laptops, Sony has just about everything. There might be some products that ring resoundingly clear to its themeline of “Make. Believe,” but the ones that are not ringing true take with it some of the clout that other products might deserve.  The Walkman might have still be bringing in dollars to Sony, but why did it take so long for it to pull old technology that detracted from the power and meaning of its brand?

Or take Best Buy, which has created a store that offers product solutions to satisfy an oven customer and a CD customer (whoever that is, anymore), providing less meaning to the whole group rather than more intensive meaning to a smaller group. What you sell and your willingness to scrap what is not in synch is an important part of staying relevant and resonant.

Clarity of message is not simply dependent upon the message itself, but how it is made real to the customer. Sony’s “Make. Believe” could have a real profound effect on the market if it meant a culture shift within Sony. Imagine the impact drawing a line in the sand and saying “from this point forward, absolutely nothing we do will be ordinary” might have. No more AM/FM alarm clocks, no more set-top boxes, no more DVD players, Only products that were true to “Make. Believe.”

There is a reason Ping is set to vanish from Apple’s repertoire. Its social network-angle was never about “Think Different” and has become more of a hindrance to its brand then a help. A brand is constantly being examined critically by potential customers looking for a meaningful connection to their purchase. Make it easy for them and get rid of the clutter.

Social media does have promising opportunities for marketing, but only as another venue. Don’t assume it is the answer to your marketing problems without context. As I’ve always said, social media must be approached like any other form of marketing. If you don’t have the right message, it doesn’t matter how many blogs you write, tweets you tweet or Facebook updates you link.

Now comes an even more sinister, proposed use of social media: Using it in place of market research. IBM recently completed a study with chief marketing officers to find out how much they are using social media and in what ways.

What caught my eye was that less than half of them are checking blogs, third-party reviews and consumer reviews and rely mostly on market research to get a reading of the pulse of their target audiences.

Good for them.

Checking what’s said online is something all CMOs must do, but don’t think it means all that much. They are qualitative in nature, much like focus groups and online questionnaires.

The group dynamic dominates focus groups; meaning honest answers are rarely given. That’s why we never do them. And online research means you have a self-selected audience taking part in the questionnaire. You only get the extremes (hate you or love you) without having projectable data that can tell you if your brand is resonating and why, and what you need to do to make it more meaningful and move the needle.

Social media only gives you shadings, and what you find there must be tested in market research. As it is in marketing, social media is only a tool.

Even more shockingly, the authors of the study suggested that social media could be a way to evaluate current marketing and enable CMOs to initiate change within a company. Return on their marketing investment was considered the best way to evaluate by CMOs and the study’s authors suggested social media was better than that.

I have a different way to evaluate. How about measuring if your company or brand is stealing market share? Isn’t that the whole point?

For a minute there, Google+ felt like it was going to be really, really important. That it was going to be the game changer in the Social Networking world. Didn’t it?

It had all the momentum.

Nearly all of my technologically savvy friends were posting the warning signs on their Facebook wall, proclaiming that Facebook better beware because Google+ was much better. It started to feel like it this could be the death of Facebook.

So I beg the question, where did Google+ go? And why does it feel like it left us so quickly?

Here’s what I think the problem is.

Google+ hit the marketplace pushing its beta platform. Doing this meant that it was still ironing out all of the various kinks — in other words, making sure it had all of it’s components right. In doing so, they introduced Circles, a brilliant function, which allows users to easily click, drag, manage and categorize all of their online friends. It has video chat too. And aesthetically, the overall look and feel of Google+ is far more pleasing than Facebook.

But here is the problem — Google hit the market pushing a beta product. One that established ground-breaking social networking functions, like Circles, before it was fully really ready for the masses. Doing this gave Facebook the time to learn from Google+, since it was still under development. Consequentially, Facebook capitalized on what Google+ suggested the new table stakes were in the social media marketplace, and eventually improved upon its own, less powerful, product.

Very wisely, Facebook has now added video chat capabilities. Moreover, they recently announced “smart lists”, a function that automatically creates circles of friends for the online user.

My suggestion for Google+, do not push your service to the masses if it is not yet ready for the masses. Your brand is all about serving people and having those users connect efficiently with one another. By rushing to introduce your product, you have given Facebook the time and knowledge it needed to improve upon its weaknesses.

Ultimately, this gives users less of a reason to change from Facebook to Google+. And why would they, especially since Facebook can now do everything that Google+ can do?

Maybe this is why the last post from one of my aforementioned, technologically savvy friends was made five days ago on Google+, yet on Facebook, just five minutes. Seems like the incentive to change platforms is no longer there.

Using social media to further your brand preference among target audience continues to baffle marketers because, as I’ve stated before, the tactics are rarely related to the brand.

But it’s not that hard to do. It’s simple, really.

Case in point: General Motors’ Buick and GMC divisions have configured their website so that, when you build your own new car, it can be saved instantly on Facebook to share and get feedback.

I actually think that’s a fine tactic, and one that appeals to one of the drivers of automobile purchases: What will my family and friends think?

However, there was even greater opportunity for those car brands if that driver was embedded in their brand messaging. But it wasn’t. In fact, in the case of Buick, sharing on Facebook has no meeting to its brand of “luxury.” (Although, it should be noted, “luxury” is owned by Lexus in the marketplace.)

GMC plays in the American heavy truck field with Ford and the brand messages tend to swirl around power. There’s nothing there about choice and control (building your own) or appealing to others (which, for example, would work for the Corvette) that this Facebook application suggests.

Social media is attractive to marketers because it’s inexpensive, it is a relatively new delivery system and it operates on a personal level for the prospective customer. To make it meaningful, however, and have long-term benefits, the tactics of social media must support the brand or it becomes the equivalent of a flyer on the windshield.

Think of it this way: Brand explains the reasons why you are doing what you’re doing, including executing social media tactics. Once you have explained the why (“Because those who buy our cars are opening their world, this new Facebooks application allows you to share the car you built with everyone,” for example), you become more memorable, preferred and in the considered set of those you are trying to reach.

It’s not that hard, really.

There are several news reports recently that said Facebook has lost six million US users over the last year. While its user base continues to grow in developing countries, it seems that Facebook has plateaued in the US.

Facebook is an interesting case in terms of marketing and human behavior. Though there were other “social networks” that preceded it, Facebook has enjoyed the success or the influence more than all of them. But is Facebook a victim of its own success?

It is a funny thing with social media. There can only be one winner. Why would anyone join a network that no one was part of? You only want the one, like Facebook, that has (nearly) everybody.

However, can it be too big? We often tell clients that, in crowded market spaces with many competitors (and yes Facebook is seeing more and more competition), you have to tell the market who you are for, and equally important, who you are not for to be meaningful and impactful in that market. Facebook has forgotten this marketing dynamic. In fact, it seems Facebook would like everyone to think they have something for everyone.

The generic is never attractive. Everyone wants to feel special and reaffirmed, which is why brands must put a stake in the ground. The moment a consumers choice of a brand is rewarded by being like everyone else, they will start looking elsewhere for that affirmation.

You can say what you want about social media and its worth in the market place, but this is a highly debated topic and, if Facebook continues to lose membership, this argument will continue get louder. Perhaps Facebook has gotten to the point where it actually believes it is too big to fail and that its members should feel privileged to be part of Facebook. But this is exactly backwards and indicative of an organization primed to stumble.

Do I think Facebook will go away any time soon? Hardly. But unless it works harder to make its brand a reflection of its customers then Facebook will have a hard row to hoe in Farmville.

Forrester Research has just come out with paper that says most social media advertising for Gen-X and Gen-Y is wasted. The firm is right, and the reason for their conclusion is that social media advertising has too much clutter.

If a typical Gen-X or Gen-Yer has a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, foursquare, and a Hi5 account, there are hundreds of “friends” being followed. Is it realistic to think that a message from a marketer is going to take precedence over commenting on a friend’s picture or status message?

With all of the “noise” these demographics invite into their lives, it is a safe bet they can adeptly filter out the unwanted noise. According to Forrester, that is exactly what they are doing.

Social media as a marketing tool has some real problems. It is very difficult, if not impossible to do social media marketing well over a long period of time. That is not to say that there is the occasional social media advertising “success,” but success in social media marketing has yet to be sustained over a period of time.

Even the lauded Old Spice spots are now just a blip in the memory banks of the very audience it wished to reach. A year from now, they will scarcely be remembered and will have done little to increase preference over the long term. Remember, with hundreds of friends tweeting, blogging, posting to their walls, and sending friend requests, this demographic’s memory span is about five tweets long when it comes to marketing messages.

Forrester Research contends, “Companies building new brands should focus their efforts on existing social platforms, offering topics and tools that haven’t been used by other social media marketers; those hoping to provide long-term support to established brands might choose to launch product- or brand-specific communities and networks.”

The conclusion there is that, in order to be successful in social media marketing, you have to do something that has not been done before (and then when it is copied, do something that has not been done before, and when it is copied…). Clearly this is not a marketing model that can be sustained. It sounds terrific for a business to say ,”Check us out on Facebook,” but wouldn’t you rather have audiences check you out at your web address or store location?

The problem is meaning and differentiation, as it always is. With social media marketing, it is difficult to get either. The marketer looses control of meaning when they put their latest webisode online and, once you have a good idea, you will instantly get copied. That is how social media marketing started in the first place, no?

There is a place for social media marketing, but only as a supplement to what you are already doing. But I do not see it as the savior of the ad business. There are a great many agencies that would like it to be (hence the reason they push it), but social media marketing as so many variables, most of which a marketer cannot control, that there are other more effective ways to spend that money.

Grow your business for the long term, not for the next five tweets.